Saturday, 29 December 2012

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Had an email from a client earlier today asking if he could have 2 cards. Yes not a problem I said, send me the details and I'll get onto it.

The email dutifully arrives and he wants two cards FROM his dog, Toby.

One is to go to the dog of the humans that look after Toby from time to time and the other is to the humans that do my clients garden (that's confused you hasn't it lol)

Anyway, the topper is from Cupcake Crafting Paws for Thought CD's as this is what Toby looks like in real life. I needed a bit of "poetic license" with regards the sentiment as the topper actually has daffodils (as you can see) so had to come up with something to make it "fit".

I took the topper into Serif Craft Artist 2 and added a Santa Claus hat which I then glittered with a Sakura Clear Star pen. The backing paper, ribbon & bow were also done is Craft Artist 2

Morning all and welcome to my blog. I am going to try and embellish my blog posts a bit more as I normally just give a brief description of each card where as when I browse other peoples blogs, I see that they put a lot more information on, so here goes and wish me luck :-)

If any of you don't tweet or don't understand how friendships can be formed using just 140 characters, then you've not given it a fair chance and you've not met my wonderful Twitter Sister @jax1369. To say we have become firm, long term best mates via twitter is an understatement. We communicate via BlackBerry Messenger every day and now they have the new option of BlackBerry Chat via the service, we can actually speak to each other too - mostly by mistake as one of us has hit the button in error but that's by the by.

Jax has a love of all things Gothic; I've met her husband - he has too. NOOOO, I am not saying Mad Dog is Gothic - he'd abuse me in an email if I did. I mention it as I needed an image suitable for them both so when I saw this "Skully Santa" Digistamp which is available here I knew it was the perfect design.

I opened up Docrafts Designer and used a backing paper from one of the Papermania Capsule Collection cds and used one of the overlays to give the paper an appearance of texture. I added the "Christmas Wishes" digistamp to the bottom of the sheet and printed it out onto a cream coloured linen paper.

I tore the edges of the paper to make it fit onto an 8 x 8 card. Using Tea Dye Distress ink, I edged the paper and bought the colour into the centre of the paper to give it the aged look. The used some "sepia" spritz spray very lightly to add another feature.

The topper was printed onto Clarity Stamp Theuva card and coloured with promarkers and flexmarkers. Edges were torn after the colouring and again edged with Tea Dye Distress ink pad.

I went around the card blank with the same ink pad, then curled the corners of the backing paper before attaching to the card blank.

I cut the snowflake from a Spellbinders die set onto antique gold mirri card and then dabbed over it with Cranberry alcohol ink. I am pleased with the result as I didn't want a completely covered look.

All in all, I am really pleased with how this card fell together and it was a nice change from doing 'traditional Christmas' designs. Hope you like it too

I was asked by a wonderful twitter friend, Cameron Lawton, to make a card for her husbands upcoming birthday. The brief was that he likes steam trains. So what better iconic image to use than the classic Mallard.

The image is from La Pashe and drawn by the very talented Jim Harker and I have coloured it with a mixture of pro & flex markers.

The trellis work on the gold mirri was made using a hougie board.

Now, this isn't a photo of the final card - like an idiot, I deleted the wrong one. All that was added to the final card was the steam clouds coming out of the funnel.

Sunday, 18 November 2012

Yesterday, I was having a browse around YouTube & Pinterest and came across some wonderful quaint pincushions and I looked about my flat to see what I had -- I found a polystyrene ball and I have a few small pringle pots (a lady I clean for saves them for me). I found a scrap of material, cut up an old pillowcase to cover the polystyrene ball , heated up the glue gun and came up with ........................................

Added a few vintage style embellishments and a marabou feather et voila ............

Monday, 22 October 2012

Hi everyone. I was waiting with great anticipation from Jennie Payments Quilting Show on Create and Craft on Sunday morning and it was worth the wait (a 2hr show would have been better though).

Having some jelly roll strips left over from a cushion cover I made, I decided to have a go at a Log Cabin block using the techniques Jennie had demonstrated in the show.

My mechanical cat, Pumpkin, had asked me to make him a blankie (oh yes, he talks to me lol) as his little botty was getting cold sat on a wooden table. He wanted to be able to curl up in front of the fire on a cosy blankie.

So, here is what I made him last night. The edges are finished off professionally but Pumpkin doesn't mind :-)

Really enjoyed putting the block together though. I didn't follow a specific colour scheme as it was the technique I was more interested in rather then the finished illusion.

Thank you for reading my Blog
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Thursday, 18 October 2012

Bear with me as I'm not good at doing instructions (especially for a cushion cover I made up as I went along)

I'll give the basics on how I did the top part, then you can make the rest up however you choose. Mine has been sewn together along the bottom, but you may wish to put a zip in, poppers, buttons, ribbon ties or whatever.

The cushion pad I had is a 42cm (ish) square so I'll give measurements for that

Cut a 42cm square for the backing.

Using a water soluble pen or a vanishing ink pen, mark ev 1cm up 2 sides.

I used 7 different patterns from my mini jelly roll and I cut 43cm lengths from each one (I got 2 from 1 length and used another matching strip for the 3rd strip)

Fold each strip in half and press.

I layered mine up as follows A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G

take the first strip and lay the raw edge between the 2cm mark at the bottom of the backing fabric.

stitch straight across

take the 2nd strip and lay it 2cm above with the folded edge laying over the previous piece

(Is this making sense so far ??? Its quicker to make it than write it up lol )

Keep going in this manner until you've used all the strips up and you should (I say should) end up with a "paper pleated" effect

trim the side and there you have it.

PLEASE LAY ALL THE PIECES OUT FIRST TO MAKE SURE I HAVE PUT THE RIGHT GAP IN BETWEEN EACH STRIP

In Memory Of My Son, Tristan.

Tristan died suddenly on 18th Feb 2015 from an intra-cerebral haemorrhage. He was 32. There was no warning and, thankfully, no pain for him. If you are able, please click on photo to donate to www.tcf.org.uk. The Compassionate Friends provide support for bereaved parents and siblings.